Before there was Hamilton, there was 1776. Who’d have thought a musical about how the Declaration of Independence might work?
That was Sherman Edwards, who worked his way through NYU as a jazz pianist. There were a few years of teaching high school history while he pulled together his career as a backup musician and composer, at which he was moderately successful. If you’re of a certain age, you will remember Johnny Mathis singing “Wonderful, Wonderful” – that was Edwards’ work. He’d wanted to do the show but hadn’t gotten far with it; it was the Sixties, and people were thinking about other things. Finally, playwright Peter Stone re-thought his initial refusal of Edwards’ suggestion. The two went to work and it opened in 1969. It turned out to be just the thing for a time of political turmoil.
So here we are today at the Muny, opening 1776 on the night of the second half of the first Democratic presidential debate. Could we all please just look at what these guys in Philadelphia – white and male and financially comfortable as they were – were going through?
Our leading man, leading the way as well as the cast, is John Adams (Robert Petkoff). Adams believes that the Continental Congress has dithered too long, and they need to take a stand. He’s made his feelings eminently clear – Adams is nothing if not a high verbal – and the opening number is “Sit Down, John,” with his peers instructing him to cool it. That’s not easy for him to do under any circumstances, and the show makes good use of the well-documented fact that it was very hot in Philadelphia, like St. Louis a city of brick buildings, as they worked things out. (And then you think about the clothing – shirts, vests, jackets, breeches coming only to the knee but stockings commencing immediately therebelow. Hot or what?)
George Washington, often heard from but never seen here, was commanding the ragtag Continental Army, created after the battles of Lexington and Cord the previous spring. It wasn’t going well. Dispirited communications arrive frequently, increasing the sense of urgency for some delegates and fear in others. This pulling off from the mother country was by no means a commonly accepted idea in the group. One argument was that it was impossible to pull off, no one had done it before, and it was disrespectful. Another, perhaps more visceral, and one that runs through the discussion is financial. For some of the delegates it was all about the money. It would imperil their usually considerable personal net worth. One might say it was all about the Benjamins if it were not for the fact that Benjamin Franklin (Adam Heller) himself was a delegate and ally of John Adams in the move to independence. Focusing on money rather than the big picture, too, sounds rather familiar.
The two other Pennsylvania delegates are among the reluctant, as are the New Yorkers and the Southerners. It’s the New Englanders that are all in – they’ve got British troops tromping through their village greens. But that quiet fellow stage left who spends much of his time reading turns out to be Thomas Jefferson (Keith Hines), as eloquent as we’d expect, but wanting to go home to his farm and his wife (Ali Ewoldt). John Adams’ dialogue with his wife Abigail (Jenny Powers), outlines much of Adams’ thinking, although she’s 300 miles away. (The letters have, thankfully, been preserved.)
The show is close to historically accurate, and that means there’s a lot of necessary exposition. Never mind that; the score is an absolute pleasure, especially the loving duets between the Adamses. It’s worth nothing that this is the only Broadway show in which the musicians’ contract allow them to leave the pit during the show, because at one point in the first act there’s about half an hour between songs.
Rob Ruggiero directed, helping show us how human these men, and women, were, letting the humor as well as the tempers show through. Luke Cantarella’s lovely version of the Assembly Room in Independence Hall pleases the eye. Despite the whole world knowing how it all turned out, the play manages to keep us engaged, even a little tense.
An emotional, satisfying, stirring evening. The bravery of the men who pledged “our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor” not knowing how it was going to turn out still carries an emotional impact.
1776
through July 3
The Muny
Forest Park